Subject: Re: I’m Trimming - Filed @472
I'm trying to exit BRK with large sums at good price points, put it all in cash, and wait for a rainy day. Another way of saying that is I'm making a significant wholesale change in my asset allocation from 85% net worth in BRK to 60% net worth in BRK and putting the proceeds in cash for now. I don't understand how writing call options will allow me to do that effectively, safely, and quickly, with my very substantial positions in BRK. I can see playing around at the fringes with selling a few calls, to boost your return a bit, but I’m exiting, not allowing these positions to sit there, to wait in case I have to cover the option, nor have the intent of buying the stock if called, even if I didn't have long positions to surrender in those accounts to begin with.

It can be done in your situation, but you'd have to have some flexibility on the timing. The essence of writing an option is that the OTHER guy has the optionality!

If you write calls that are at or slightly in the money, the chances are good that the stock gets called away. If you use a variety of dates and strikes, some of it will go, and your liquidation will be spread out over time. If the stock price tanks, you'll only have a small bag of cash and you will have missed the opportunity to exit, but that's out on the less probable end of the spectrum. For example, if you write (say) a September $350 call you are pretty darned sure that you're going to be sending those shares away, and you might get (say) 50 cents more per B share than simply putting in a sell order. If you are happy to ride the ups and downs for a few months, one could do a variety of dates and strikes and have a glide path to the sale quantity you wanted...but only a probabilistic one.

If you want the exit to be *today*, you want to simply sell the stock.

Jim